Saturday, February 27, 2016

Kunstbau January 28, 2015 - May 3, 2015

On occasion of the centennial of August Macke’s death, the
Lenbachhaus, in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Bonn, presented the
first exhibition to explore Macke’s friendship with Franz Marc and the
exchange of artistic ideas between them. With around two hundred
paintings, works on paper, objets d’art, and private documents, the show
offered a vivid picture of the two artists’ lives and art between 1910
and 1914, illustrating how Macke and Marc inspired each other and
highlighting the close and affectionate ties between them.

Macke
first visited Marc in his studio in Munich on January 6, 1910. The two
struck up a deeply felt friendship and began a creative dialogue that
would enter the annals of twentieth-century art. Their close
collaboration was short-lived: Macke died in 1914, only weeks after the
outbreak of World War I; in 1916, the war took Marc’s life as well.

The
exhibition was divided into chapters that portray the two artists’
creative evolution from 1910 on, document their early encounters in
Sindelsdorf, Tegernsee, and Bonn, examine their debates over the theory
of colors, and show them at work on the ‘Blue Rider.’

Documents from
their shared travels and their visits to each other’s homes, the gifts
they gave each other, and objets d’art from their possessions also
illustrate the important roles their wives, Elisabeth Macke and Maria
Marc, played in their friendship. In 1912, they met in Macke’s studio in
Bonn to paint the mural Paradies as a testament to their mutual
attachment.

The exhibition showed in detail how Macke and Marc absorbed
the inspirations of Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and abstraction. Out of
these influences, each crafted his own art, whose development the
exhibition traces to the last pictures they created in 1914 before the
catastrophe of the war put an all too early end to their lives and
oeuvres.

Both artists were very young when they first met—August
Macke had only just turned twenty-three and Franz Marc was about to turn
thirty. Neither the contrast between their personalities—Macke was
impulsive and outspoken, whereas Marc was often pensive and always very
deliberate in his actions—nor their diverging views on art and the
politics of culture ever cast a shadow on the bonds of affection between
them. In his famous obituary for Macke, Marc highlights the loss his
young friend’s death meant for art with great precision, but it is also,
and first and foremost, a token of his profound grief.

The
collections of the Lenbachhaus and the Kunstmuseum Bonn formed the basis
for this comprehensive exhibition.

Macke spent the greater part of his
life in Bonn; Marc was the only native son of Munich among the artists
of the ‘Blue Rider,’ of whose oeuvres the Lenbachhaus holds the world’s
most important collection. Numerous eminent works on loan from German
and international museums and private collections helped round out the
show.

October 21, 2015 – January 24, 2016 AT KUnsTBAU

Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky:
two names that have come to stand almost as synonyms for classical
modernism. They are associated with fundamental avant-garde movements
such as the "Blue Rider"
and the Bauhaus, and regarded as founding fathers and pacesetters of
abstract art. History also records their relationship as one of the
great friendships in twentieth-century art.

Klee and Kandinsky were indeed close, though never uncritical,
friends for almost three decades. Central to the rapport between them
was a focused engagement with each other’s art sustained by many shared
aspirations as well as differences on personal and artistic levels. Both
artists strove to spiritualize art and explore the intrinsic laws of
its visual means. Yet Klee’s ironically refracted realism was alien to
Kandinsky’s idealism, and his protean individualism clashed with his
friend’s pursuit of the autonomous laws of abstract art.

The
exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Zentrum Paul Klee,
Berne, and will focus on the years between 1922 and 1931, when both
taught at the Bauhaus, worked in a close exchange of artistic ideas, and
even lived door to door in one of the "Master Houses" designed by
Walter Gropius. Yet their works from the "Blue Rider" period as well as
the late oeuvres of the two artists, who died in 1940 and 1944, likewise
reflect the bonds of friendship between them.

Catalogue

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition (360 pp., more than 300
color ill.) edited by Michael Baumgartner, Annegret Hoberg and Christine
Hopfengart has been published by Prestel Verlag in German and English.

Never before has such an outstanding selection of
works from these two masters ever been united in one exhibition.

Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky – they are considered to
be the “founding fathers” of “classical modernism” and
their artists’ friendship to be one of the most fascinating of
the twentieth century. Their relationship was shaped by
mutual inspiration and support, but also by rivalry and
competition – a combination that spurred both of them on
in their artistic work. The exhibition “Klee & Kandinsky”
traces the eventful history of this artistic relationship over
the long period from 1900 to 1940 for the very first time. It
draws attention to parallels and similarities as well as
differences and distinctions, with an emphasis on their
personal and artistic dialogue at the time of the “Blue
Rider” and the Bauhaus. The exhibition was created in
cooperation with the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, where it will be presented from 21 October 2015 to
24 January 2016.

Easy Virtue will run from 19 February to 19 June 2016 at the
Van Gogh Museum. The exhibition, organised in collaboration with the
Musée d’Orsay, explores the depiction of prostitution in French art in
the period 1850–1910. It is the first time that the subject has been
highlighted at a major exhibition. The first showing at the Musée
d’Orsay in Paris under the title Splendeurs et Misères attracted nearly 420,000 visitors.

Easy Virtue
at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will now examine how the theme of
prostitution was dealt with by a variety of artists. Over 100 paintings
and works on paper by more than 40 different artists can be admired,
including big names like Van Gogh, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso.
The exhibits include loans from international museums and private
collections, the vast majority of which have never been shown before in
the Netherlands. Interesting historical items also feature, such as a
police record, pornographic photographs, a 19th-century ornamental bed
and a whip belonging to a famous courtesan.

Vincent van Gogh, In the
Café: Agostina Segatori in Le Tambourin., 1887, oil on canvas, 21 ¾ × 18
¼ in., Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Prostitution was a favourite theme in visual art in the second half
of the 19th century. Inspired by Baudelaire’s dictum that art should
represent modern life, artists depicted prostitution as an aspect of
contemporary urban life in Paris. They painted women soliciting on the
boulevards, wealthy courtesans in their salons, and worn-down
prostitutes in brothels. It was a topical theme, reflecting frequent
social debates about the dangers of prostitution and the benefits and
drawbacks of regulation. Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910
examines what it was that drew artists to this complex and sensitive
subject between the Second Empire and the belle époque. The exhibition
shows the world of Paris prostitutes as recorded by a variety of
painters and draughtsmen: a world of contrasts, of luxury, make-up and
glamour, but also of poverty, disease and misery.

Unique and for the first time in the Netherlands
This is the first time that the theme of prostitution has been examined in such detail in an exhibition. Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910
comprises over 150 objects, including more than 100 paintings, works on
paper, sculpture and decorative art. There are striking and famous
masterpieces by big names like Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Kees van Dongen, František Kupka and
Vincent van Gogh, as well as works by lesser-known artists such as Louis
Anquetin, Henri Gervex, Jean Béraud, Félicien Rops and Auguste Chabaud.
High-level visual art is complemented in Easy Virtue by
photographs, books, magazine illustrations and intriguing and curious
objects like pornographic photographs, a police record with photos of
arrested prostitutes, a gilded and decorated ornamental bed, and the
whip that belonged to the celebrated courtesan Valtesse de la Bigne.

Visitors to the exhibition will be transported from the dance-halls and
cafés where women picked up their clients, to the closed world of the
brothel and of prison, where illegal prostitutes and women suffering
from venereal disease were incarcerated.
Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910 has been
designed by Clement & Sanôu – an Amsterdam duo known for their
costume, lighting and set designs for opera, ballet and theatre,
including the Dutch National Ballet’s recent Mata Hari.

Uncertainty and ambiguity

Easy Virtue is organised around four themed ‘chapters’. The
exhibition begins with Uncertainty and ambiguity, which shows how
painters visualised prostitution in the public space. Prostitution was
legalised in France in the early 19th century. It was viewed as a
necessary evil, which had to be controlled and hidden away as much as
possible in order to protect public morals and to counter the spread of
venereal disease. Street prostitution was only permitted in the evening
(after l’heure du gaz when the gaslights were lit) and for prostitutes
who were registered with the police. Many women also worked illegally,
however. Prostitutes were not always readily distinguishable from
‘respectable’ women in the street or when out and about at night.
Artists incorporated subtle references to this ambiguity in their
paintings, using colours, poses, meaningful looks or the interaction
between their figures.

The most important works in Uncertainty and ambiguity are:

Woman on the Champs-Elysées at Night, 1890–91 by Louis
Anquetin (Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, acquired with the support of
BankGiro Loterij and the Rembrandt Association),

Moulin de la Galette, 1889 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (The Art Institute of Chicago),

Study for ‘Flirt’ (The Englishman in the Moulin Rouge), 1892 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (The Metropolitan Museum, New York)

Waiting, c. 1885 by Jean Béraud (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

The Splendour of the Courtesans

The chapter The Splendour of the Courtesans shows how courtesans were
depicted in art. These expensive escorts and stars of haute
prostitution often began their career on stage or as ‘ordinary’
prostitutes. Having risen to prominence by sharing the beds of rich men
and politicians, they enjoyed a certain status and flaunted their social
success by having their portraits made in paintings, sculptures and
photographs, which they spread as widely as they could. The flamboyant
courtesan was worshipped in the theatre, followed by the press and was
even a trendsetter when it came to fashion.

One of the most famous
courtesans was La Païva (1819–1884). Born Thérèse Lachmann into a poor
Jewish family in Moscow, she moved to Paris, where she climbed the
ladder to become the most successful courtesan of the 19th century. She
was renowned for the extravagant parties and dinners she held for the
Paris beau monde, which were regularly attended by politicians, noblemen
and writers like Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola. Several pieces of
furniture from her house can be seen at Easy Virtue. There is
also a 19th-century gilded bed, decorated with a figure of Leda and the
swan and little angels, which probably belonged to a courtesan or came
from one of the many brothels in Paris.

The Thorny Path (The Courtesan’s Carriage or The Modern Courtesan), 1873 by Thomas Couture (Philadelphia Museum of Art).

At the Brothel: from Anticipation to Seduction

The next chapter in the exhibition is At the Brothel: from
Anticipation to Seduction, which reveals the hidden world of the brothel
– a rewarding subject for artists looking for modern material. It gave
them the opportunity to experiment with a new and unconventional way of
representing the female nude and to depict what went on behind those
closed doors: the game of anticipation and seduction, but also the
everyday lives of the prostitutes. Artists painted the endless waiting
around for clients, but also intimate, domestic scenes with the women in
conversation, eating their meals or washing and dressing, sometimes in
the presence of a customer.

The most important works in At the brothel: anticipation and seduction are:

In the Salon: the Couch, c. 1893 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand),

Debauchery in Colour and Form

The final chapter of the exhibition, Debauchery in Colour and Form,
focuses on the modern era from the turn of the 20th century to 1910.
Prostitution had become an established avant-garde theme by that time.
Rather than being hidden, it was now visualised explicitly, verging at
times on the caricature. Artists were concerned less about the theme as
such than with colour, form and expressiveness. This new generation of
painters tended to present the prostitute as a solitary figure, no
longer in the context of a brothel. Some saw the Paris prostitute as an
attractive subject for colourful canvases showing sensual, loose women,
while others took a very different approach, presenting her in a raw
style as a prisoner in a world of darkness.

André Derain, Woman in a Chemise or Dancer, 1906, oil on canvas, 39 ¼ ×
32 in., Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst. The Derain image is NOT
free of copyright

Prints-Prostitution-Privacy

In parallel with Easy Virtue, the Print Room in the Van Gogh Museum’s exhibition wing is showing a selection of 19th-century prints under the title Prints-Prostitution-Privacy.
These intimate little artworks, whether autonomous or illustrations for
erotic texts, seem to whisper a secret to the viewer. Women of easy
virtue were depicted partially or entirely undressed, in poses and
situations varying from suggestive to explicitly sexual. The prints,
produced in limited editions, were intended for a closed circle of
artists, publishers, dealers and collectors, who belonged to the
decadent sub-culture within the Paris elite. They kept the separate
prints in portfolios and viewed them in the privacy of their studies or
in the gallery. Erotica was viewed as a natural expression of the
‘French spirit’, so long as it was artistically presented. In this way,
works of a sensual nature could be kept out of sight of government
censors and other moral crusaders.

New acquisition

The Prints-Prostitution-Privacy exhibit also features an exceptional new acquisition by the Van Gogh Museum:

La lecture après le bain,
1879–83, by Edgar Degas (1834–1917).

Degas made his erotic monotypes
(one-off prints) of prostitutes primarily for himself. He covered a
sheet of glass with black ink, which he then wiped and scratched away to
conjure nudes out of the darkness. The dozens of ‘black’ prints he
created were only discovered in his studio after his death. La lecture après le bain was purchased with the support of the BankGiro Loterij, the Mondriaan Fund and the Rembrandt Association.

Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by the richly illustrated book Easy
Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910 (also available in Dutch),
Van Gogh Museum/Musée d’Orsay, 192 pages.

The catalogue Splendours and Miseries: Images of Prostitution in France, 1850–1910, Musée d’Orsay/Flammarion is also available, 308 pages.

Monday, February 22, 2016

On Tuesday, March 8, Swann Galleries
will offer 19th & 20th Century
Prints & Drawings, featuring works by recognizable European masters and
prominent American printmakers.

The sale is headlined by Winslow
Homer’s serene Fly Fishing, Saranac Lake,
1889. Fly Fishing was made in the
same year Homer abandoned etching, making it likely his last etching, as well
as his most experimental. The print is estimated at $80,000 to $120,000.

Homer was inspired to create fine
prints by James A. M. Whistler’s “Etching Revival,” and this sale features some
of those Whistler works as well, including Nocturne:
Palaces, etching and drypoint, 1879-80, a scarce etching that typifies the
artist’s painterly technique of inking and wiping to make unique impressions.

Whistler’s Quiet Canal, etching and
drypoint, 1879-80, from his second set of Venice etchings, is also included. Nocturne: Palaces is estimated at
$70,000 to $100,000, and Quiet Canal at
$30,000 to $50,000.

Works by other American printmakers
include Martin Lewis’s 1930 drypoint and sand-ground Shadow Dance ($30,000 to $50,000). The market for prints by Lewis
has seen an upswing in recent years, and last November Swann set a record for
the artist when a print sold for $72,500.

Edward Hopper began making etchings
and drypoints with the help of Lewis; Hopper’s Night Shadows, etching, 1921 is also in the sale ($25,000 to
$35,000).

Several pieces by Regionalist artist Grant Wood are in the sale,
including Sultry Night, a 1939
lithograph, and the only nude to be represented by a regionalist artist
($15,000 to $20,000).

Other Regionalists represented include Thomas Hart
Benton, who captures motion and drama with The
Race, lithograph, 1942 ($15,000 to $20,000),

while the Social realists are
represented by Reginald Marsh, whose Tattoo­–Shave–Haircut,
etching, 1932, depicts a scene beneath the El on the Bowery ($20,000 to
$30,000).

Featured prominent European artists include
Henri Matisse’s La Danse, a color aquatint,
1935-1936, based on Matisse’s maquette for an early iteration of a mural
commissioned by Albert C. Barnes in 1930 ($60,000 to $90,000).

Pablo Picasso’s Buste au corsage à carreaux, a 1957 lithograph,

and Jeunesse, a lithograph from 1950, are
estimated at $40,000 to $60,000 and $30,000 to $50,000.

These and several other
Picasso prints are featured alongside Picasso ceramics, including Bearded Man’s Wife, a partially glazed terre de faïence turned pitcher, 1953
($20,000 to $30,000).

Bright works from Joan Miró,
including Le Matador, color etching,
drypoint, aquatint and carborundum, 1969, add pops of color to the sale
($30,000 to $50,000).

Color and line play delicately in Wassily Kandinsky’s Lithographie Blau, color lithograph,
1922,

contrasting with the bold and whimsical use of color in Marc Chagall’s
color lithograph, Mounting the Ebony
Horse, 1948 (both $15,000 to $20,000 each).

Salvador Dalí’s The Mythology, a complete set of 16
drypoints with aquatint, 1960-64, shows the artist’s unique eye applied to
classical subject matter ($30,000 to $50,000).

The auction will be held Tuesday, March 8,
beginning at 10:30 a.m. The auction preview will be open to the public
throughout Amory Week, with the exhibition open Thursday and Friday, March 3
& 4 from 10 am to 6 pm; Saturday, March 5 from noon to 5 pm; and Monday,
March 7 from 10 am to 6 pm.; and by appointment.

An
illustrated auction catalogue will be available for $40 from Swann Galleries,
Inc., 104 East 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, or online at www.swanngalleries.com.

Friday, February 19, 2016

The oil on canvas titled, “Eglise de Chatou”
by Maurice Utrillo (French, 1883-1955)is a classic example of
the artist’s work. Utrillo was known for painting Parisian street
scenes, as well as the countryside encompassing the city as his subject
matter. His unique style of using bold, rich colors with strong black
contours have made his landscapes of buildings and streets most
desirable among collectors. Accompanied by impeccable letters of
authenticity, this painting will be offered at $60,000-90,000.

Another
important French artist is seascape painter, Eugène Boudin (French,
1824-1898). Boudin became known for his marine scenes with figures and
boats along the French shores and is considered one of the earlier
French plein-air Impressionist painters. The oil on panel titled, “Beach
Scene,” also estimated at $60,000-90,000, epitomizes Boudin’s delicate
brush strokes and atmospheric style.

The artist Albert Marquet (French,
1875-1947) continued in the tradition of Impressionism after Boudin.
Marquet often painted views of the Seine in Paris, as well as the
harbors of Rouen, Le Havre and Marseilles. His scenes were depicted with
a light palette of grey and black brushstrokes with subtle hints of
color that conveyed a rainy or misty atmosphere often with reflections
on the water. One such example that will be offered at Clars on February
21st is his oil on canvas titled, “Boat Basin,” estimated at $30,000-50,000.

Jasper
Francis Cropsey (American, 1823-1900) was one of the most respected
painters of the Hudson River School, a 19th century American art
movement led by a group of landscape artists whose aesthetic vision was
influenced by romanticism and the meticulous beauty of nature in the
Northeastern United States. Cropsey was one of the elite first
generation masters of this group with his richly colored canvases
depicting the season he favored most as his subject matter – Autumn. The
bucolic fall scene painting of birds in flight titled “Mallards on the
River (1886),” will be offered for $40,000-60,000. Clars would also like
to thank the generosity of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation in New York
for recently authenticating this painting.

Edward Moran’s (American,
1829-1901), ”A Shipwreck (1860),” is another important 19th century
American painting that will be offered for $20,000-40,000. Listed in
the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture at the Smithsonian
American Art Museum (Washington, DC), this dramatic seascape has both
important museum as well as gallery provenance making this an ideal
acquisition of the genre.

Always
a favorite, Clars is once again pleased to offer four paintings by Wolf
Kahn (American/German, b. 1927). The largest of the works is an oil on
canvas titled, “Bullock Farm (1977),” an impressive and vibrant
landscape by the artist which carries an estimate of $25,000-35,000.

An
early painting titled, “Julie London with Orange,” by California
photo-realist, Ralph Goings (American, b. 1928) will be offered at
$20,000-40,000. A gift to the current owner from the artist, his bright
and playful piece from the 1960s will surely attract admirers.

Kraushaar Galleries

Friday, February 19 - Friday, April 15, 2016

Water Water Everywhere
features a diverse group of American artists who found inspiration from
their surroundings that, in these instances, include water.

The
earliest works are from 1894. Robert Henri sketched Breton women along
the canal in Concarneau, France and John Sloan etched the Schuylkill
River, in which he “went out and drew directly from nature on the waxed
plate, then came back to the studio to do the biting.”

The Massachusetts coastline is captured in 1915 by

Charles Demuth’s
fluid watercolor of beaches at Provincetown

and by Sloan’s rugged
Gloucester rocks, The Popples, 1917.

The same locale is the subject for Milton Avery’s 1945 view of Roosting Seagulls in Lavender Sea.

William Glackens’ The Headlands, Rockport,
1936 is a sophisticated and vibrant multi-figure composition.

The
rocks, boats and islands in the Maine waters are transformed through the
Modernist visions of John Marin, William Kienbusch, John Heliker and
Karl Schrag.

The
urban waters of New York City are seen in drawings of the Central Park
Lake by Edward Hopper

and Gifford Beal.

In 1934 Dorothy Dehner drew
Governors’ Island and the Statue of Liberty from the Brooklyn Promenade
and ten years later Joseph Stella also found inspiration in Brooklyn,
looking towards another East River crossing, the Williamsburg Bridge.

Carl Holty’s 1943 painting of the New York Harbor breaks down the
subject in a Cubist-like fashion of cool blue and grey hues.